Gang member describes being ordered to kill someone

Case began when gang member told mother of order to kill

Randy Broward, 33, is charged with ordering three gang underlings to kill…

March 09, 2011|By Peter Dujardin, pdujardin@dailypress.com | 247-4749

NEWPORT NEWS — A Newport News man testified Wednesday that shortly after Randy Broward told him in March 2010 to use a shotgun to kill someone, he told Broward he would carry it out.

"I said, 'I got him,'" the man testified.

But the 22-year-old man, who had just been initiated into the gang in prior days, said he feared that Broward, 33, would kill him if he refused. Being a Christian, he said, he didn't want to kill anyone. The only way he thought he could kill someone, he said, was "if I was in the military."

Getting home that night, he said, he blew past his relatives, went to his room, closed the door and "cried for a long time."

"The angels and demons were fighting on my shoulder, and my head was just exploding," the man said. His mother came into his room and asked him what was wrong, and he blurted out: "I did something very bad," he said. "I joined a gang, and they want me to kill someone."

"Oh my God," his mother replied, the man testified.

He told his mother he didn't want the police involved, and that he just wanted to "go away" and live with relatives in Florida. But he said his mother got in touch with a friend who worked as a Newport News sheriff's deputy, and he was soon telling all to police.

A female gang member witness testified Wednesday that after not seeing that male gang-member around for a few days, Broward hung a black bandana outside that man's door knob, indicating he should be killed.

Broward, now on trial in Newport News Circuit Court, faces three counts of murder conspiracy and 21 other charges pertaining to gangs, guns and drugs. None of the three killings he's accused of ordering was ever carried out.

According to prosecution witnesses, Broward, accused of being the leader of a gang called "The Original Blood Gang," wanted the three men dead because he thought they had broken into an apartment that he and other gang members shared — while the gang members were at church — and stole $200.

The female gang member testified that though she was then dating another female gang member, Broward would force her to have sex with him, sometimes in front of her partner.

She said Broward would beat her and other members for not following obscure rules, and would require them to play Russian roulette. But she said gang members had planned among themselves to aim the gun over the top of each other's heads, so any bullet fired in the roulette would only "skim" atop their scalp. The gun never fired during the roulette, she said.

Broward refused to attend part of the trial for a couple of hours Wednesday, staying in a holding cell after a recess in the proceedings. Broward's attorney, Jim Ellenson, said his client "believes he's being railroaded."